Since I kinda/sorta photographed the driveway crop tanks for my then and now post last Friday (that’s a new name I thought of for the stock tanks, and I love it), and this week I wrote about all the edible and “cuttable” crops growing in Linda’s garden, well I figured it was time to look at what I’m growing this year in this space just outside our back door…
In the large black pot on the far right (above), basil. A summer without fresh basil isn’t really a summer at all.
In the cutting garden tank (one for veg, one for vases) is a crazy assortment of things…
I’ve never cut a stem from this Russelia equisetiformis for a vase, I wonder how it would do?
I was frustrated some seeds I’d sown in the tank hadn’t gone anywhere (more on that below), so when I saw starter plants of these ‘Mermaid Blue’ Lisianthus (Eustoma russellianus) for cheap I thought what the heck, I’ll try them! Kris at Late to the Garden Party has been using Lisianthus in her vase combinations for years and I’ve always been intrigued by them.
What I didn’t realize is that I’d bought dwarf Lisianthus. Yep. These plants max out at 8″… that means really small vases.
So it turns out there’s a theme at work in my cutting garden tank. Seeds that went nowhere, plants I bought that I didn’t realize were dwarf…
The others were supposed to be Zinnia elegans ‘Queen Lime’—which look like this. I had hope, I willed those buds to open into something sweet and varied.
Nope. This is what I got…
The last flower that I’m waiting on to open is this, SunFill™ Green, a “novel green sunflower”—which is supposed to look like this. My fingers are crossed.
And there are a few of those seeds I mentioned just now sprouting (there were others that got larger and kind of sort of bloomed at about 3-4″ tall). They are Moluccella laevis, Bells-of-Ireland, and should be 24-36″ tall. Such a dissapointment!
Moving on…
The sarracenia assortment loves the summer sun and heat…
As does this crazy tangle.
I bought two 4″ pots of Mexican sour gherkins (Melothria scabra) and they’ve exploded!
So far I’ve just been snacking on them while I garden, but soon I’ll need to harvest them and work them into dinners. Maybe I’ll even have enough for a batch of quick-pickles.
This is my first time growing ground cherries (after trying one last summer at Secret Garden Growers).
Physalis pruinosa ‘Aunt Molly’s’
They’re ripe when the husk turns yellow and falls from the vine. Small ones are starting to ripen for me now, but there are larger ones ahead, lots of them.
As you might have guessed, if I’m going to devote time, space, and water to growing edibles they should be things that are not readily available at the local market, so I’m also trying a Toma Verde Tomatillo (Physalis philadelphica). This variety is supposed to mature early and taste like “a cross between a lemon, a pineapple and a tomato. This dependable, prolific variety also produces larger size fruit than others, up to 2” in diameter”… not so much here though. I have lots of blooms, but only 3 fruits that are maturing.
Earlier in the year I had this tank filled with rat-tail radishes, Raphanus sativus, var. caudatus, I grew from seed. That experiment was a huge success and I will definitely grow them again. We ate the long, seed-filled pods for weeks, I took them to gatherings and made radish pickles too.
One other seasonal planting to show, Datura meteloides ‘Double Lavender’. It’s taking a little break at the moment but has been blooming non-stop since I bought it just after Memorial Day weekend (yes, those bumpy things are seed pods).
Here are flower photos taken on a sunnier day…
That’s the driveway crop tanks for 2025, along with several spiky plant friends…
